The solo exhibition Leaky Teeth at Institut Finlandais in Paris consisted of a a series of drawings, sculptural elements and a short film projected in the institution’s cinema. The project explores the retrieval of bodily intelligence as a key to examining our broken relationship to nature.
A process utilizing somatic body techniques stemming from Body-Mind Centering tracing sensations of pain in the body were recorded through the drawing series Quests For Bodily Intelligence. The drawings functioned as a guide for the overall research and film script as opposed to writing.
The sculptural elements Once a Wiggly World, were extracted from the set of the short film; the protagonist’s decaying tooth cavity doubling as a home for a group of cave people. The decaying tooth-cave-set was sawed into a grid, and the removed squares dispersed in space without a continuum to one another. The title of the sculptural elements refer to a quote by philosopher Alan Watts in which he illustrated the world as a “wiggly” line; on top of the line he drew a net, which “… ‘cut’ the big wiggle into little wiggles.” In this way, he argued, man has sought to impose order on chaos. But the net, he cautions, is only an illusory image:
“… the real world slips like water through our imaginary nets. However much we divide, count, sort, or classify this wiggling into particular things and events, this is no more than a way of thinking about the world: it is never actually divided.”
AISTIT coming to our senses and The Institut Finlandais in Paris
Curated by: Satu Herrala & Hans Rosenström
A short video about the exhibition "Leaky Teeth" at Institut Finlandais, by Archie Chetakouski